Social Media

The Evolution of Anonymous

A worldwide network of hackers has managed to gain access to the most secure networks on the Internet. The leaderless and faceless group, known as Anonymous, has infiltrated networks of the CIA, Interpol, email accounts of presidents, and has taken down the major web properties of global corporations. During its near-eight years of existence, Anonymous hackers have exposed a huge network of neo-Nazis in Germany and a stealth online child pornography ring.

No one knows how wide the Anonymous hackers' network stretches across continents, nor how many people belong to the Internet-based group. All activity takes place on mostly secure networks and on social media. Anyone can carry the banner of Anonymous.

The rise of social media has proliferated the threat of attacks from people who claim to be a part of the elusive group. Though many times these highly publicized threats are not carried out, they nevertheless garner significant publicity.

Anonymous has claimed responsibility for data breaches, information leaks and website crashes. The group uses YouTube to upload voice-altered messages, Pastebin to upload documents about operations, the Tor Project to encrypt links — making click paths untraceable — and other online tools to protect identities.

Most missions are carried out in response to current events or in the fight for human rights. Anonymous often claims to be fighting for the defenseless. Whether Anonymous is an organization of vigilantes working for good, or simply cyber-criminals, that's up to you to decide.

Origin: From Lulz to Political Action

Anonymous took form in 2003 on the online message board 4chan (think yesteryear's Reddit, which proliferates meme culture). The anonymity of the website spawned a group of pranksters, from which the politically geared Anonymous of today has evolved. Users on 4chan could post images and messages under the name "anonymous" or "moot" (nickname of 4chan's then 15-year-old founder Christopher Poole).

Cole Stryker, author of Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4Chan's Army Conquered the Web has been following the evolution of Anonymous since its inception. "I was interested in this whole culture of Anonymous that tracks down people and harasses them," Stryker told Mashable. "And from there, Anonymous as a political activist group evolving away from the little more trollish activities. They were attacking the Church of Scientology and starting to go after Sony and a couple of other huge companies."

The amorphous group shifted gears in 2007 with the plot against the Church of Scientology. Stryker calls this attack on what members perceived to be an "evil" organization as a rebranding for Anonymous. "Basically a group of Anons realized, 'Well, we have this ability to harness the power of thousands of strangers through the Internet to pull all those resources in making someone's life miserable. Why don't we take that power and use it for good?'"

Anonymous is still misunderstood, says Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist studying hacker culture and digital activism. Though recent attacks have been politically influenced, it's not accurate to label Anonymous as a group with any sort of agenda.

Anonymous missions can have a direct action that may be "coy and playful, sometimes macabre and sinister, often all at once, Anonymous is still animated by a collective will toward mischief — toward 'lulz,' a plural bastardization of the portmanteau LOL (laugh out loud)," Coleman states in an article published in Triple Canopy's Issue 15.

The one thing to take away about Anonymous is that it is extremely malleable. Stryker suggests thinking of Anonymous as a brand instead of a group. Anyone can claim to be Anonymous at any time.

"Anonymous means something different to everybody, that's a part of it. The guy who is protesting economic reform in Greece has very little in common with the guy who is terrorizing 11-year-old girls on YouTube in the U.S.," Stryker said, referring to the 4chan attack on Jessi Slaughter.

Becoming Infamous

Anonymous is a household name partly because of the extraordinary events that took place in 2011. Social revolutions occurred in Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, proliferated by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The air of political uprising spread to the United States, where Anonymous members picked up on these causes.

The researchers noticed that online hackers weren't just acting for bragging rights or out of boredom. Hacktivists were working for more fiery publicity. "The major shift that occurred in 2011 was that activist groups added data breaches to their repertoire with much-heightened intensity and publicity," the report states. "In other words, 2011 saw a merger between those classic misdeeds and a new 'oh by the way, we’re gonna steal all your data too' twist."

The annual report is conducted by Verizon, along with international police and security forces.

"The anti-Scientology protest was the first time they did it for political reasons," says Stryker. "Since then it has grown increasingly political, especially since they integrated with the Occupy Wall Street protests."

Anonymous has used the cartoon Guy Fawkes mask, worn by the main protagonist in 2005 movie V for Vendetta, as the main image for the movement. OWS has also adopted the icon in the pursuit of change.

Anonymous actively spread the word about the Occupy Wall Street movements, which took root in downtown Manhattan and spread to encampments of activists worldwide. "When Occupy Wall Street started, Anonymous spread the word online," says Stryker. "It drove more members to get involved. OWS was about physical protest, and Anonymous added an activist element in tandem."

Ten Hacks That Helped Define Anonymous

Hacked: CIA website, in addition to several international law enforcement accounts

Date of Incident: Feb. 3, 2012

What's Known: Anonymous made Feb. 3, 2012 the "day of action" of coordinated efforts to take down several government web properties. In the CIA.gov hack, personal data from Alabama court papers -- Social Security numbers, birthdays and addresses -- were exposed. Confidential emails from a Mexican mining agency were also released.

The same day, hackers forced their way into a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard, the UK's Metropolitan Police Service. The 16-minute call was posted on YouTube with the headline "Hacked for the Lulz."

Arrests: British teens Ryan Cleary and Jake Davis were arrested in connection with the hacked conference call. British officials who gained possession of Cleary's hard drive described him as “a 15-year-old kid who’s basically just doing this all for attention and is a bit of an idiot."

What's Known: Anonymous hackers took credit for redirecting the CBS.com and UniversalMusic.com homepages to a blank index, in response to the shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload.

Anonymous also went after websites of Brazil's federal district, the city of Yangara de Serra and Brazilian singer Paula Fernandes. The string of attacks prompted the error message "If Megaupload is down, you are down too" on the websites.

What's Known: Anonymous hackers went after neo-Nazi groups proliferating hate in Germany. The group spread the mission's goals on YouTube. Addressing neo-Nazis the group said, "Your incomprehensible actions, and your reluctance to accept the Freedom and Equality that every single human being possesses by right from birth, causes the birth to hatred and worldwide Racism." The attack included a website that published information about hate groups including personal emails and contact lists to German audiences.

Hacked: Anonymous worked to crash the host server of a lucrative child pornography ring on 40-plus websites. Anonymous exposed member IP addresses every time someone tried to access these websites.

Affected: Hosts and members of child porn website Lolita City hosted on a private, peer-to-peer file sharing darknet service called Freedom Hosting.

Date of Incident: Oct. 2011

What's Known: Anonymous set off to dismantle a child pornography ring online. It exposed a website known as Lolita City that carried more than 100 GBs of child pornography. The YouTube video posted by the hacktivists explained, "Anonymous took a pledge to defend the defenseless and fight for the fallen. We rallied an army called 'The Legion' and armed ourselves with our Chris Hansen canons. We set out for the great hunt which has become known as Operation Darknet."

The IP addresses found from the networks of the 40-plus child porn websites were released for FBI, Interpol and law enforcement agencies.

What's Known: Anonymous used DDoS attacks to shut down PayPal.com and waged a Twitter campaign against the company, asking PayPal users to cancel their accounts. Anonymous stated PayPal is a "corrupt and greedy" organization because after it blocked donations from WikiLeaks supporters from reaching the group. "We encourage anyone using PayPal to immediately close their accounts and consider an alternative," Anonymous wrote in an online message. On the first day of the social media campaign, PayPal lost lost an average of four members per minute. The stock value of PayPal suffered severely, resulting in a $933 million to $1 billion loss.

Arrests: 19 people in connection with attacks by U.S. authorities were arrested in the following weeks. The hacker group included people in the U.S., UK and the Netherlands.

What's Known: Anonymous used DoS (denial-of-service) attacks on the official websites of the Tunisian president and government bodies. Anonymous released an Operation Tunisia press release on YouTube. "The Tunisian government has made itself an enemy of Anonymous" with its censorship and "oppression of information," the video explained.

Hacked: HBGary Federal is a subsidiary of the security company HBGary, which was hired by the U.S. government to uncover members of the Anonymous network, among other protection tasks.

Affected: Former HBGary CEO Aaron Barr's Twitter account and 71,000-plus confidential company emails were hacked. Barr stepped down in aftermath.

Date of Incident: Feb. 6, 2011

What's Known: Anonymous members hacked into Barr's Twitter. They sent messages like, "Today we taught everyone a lesson. When we actually decide to bite back against those who try to bring us down, we bite back hard." Hackers also released his address and social security number on the microblogging network.

Among the information released to the public, Anonymous exposed that HBGary used illegal and unfair tactics to discredit journalist Glenn Greenwald of Salon who often wrote about WikiLeaks. Barr and his company were using cyberattacks, false information, forged docs and blackmail.

What's Known: Anonymous stole 1GB of data from NATO systems, and took to Twitter to tease officials, stating that publishing the sensitive information would be "irresponsible." NATO acknowledged the breach after Anonymous users published PDFs of classified documents to the web.

Affected: Denial-of-service attacks on the Church of Scientology websites

Date of Incident: Ongoing, Jan. 14, 2008

What's Known: The Church of Scientology floated onto Anonymous' radar after the religious entity released an interview with celebrity believer Tom Cruise. Anonymous viewed the video (since removed from YouTube) as an item of propaganda.

On resources like WhyWeProtest.net, where Anonymous regularly posts notices and statements, members say they view Scientology as a false body spreading fraudulent claims and defying human rights violations. The "official" Anonymous mission video states the long-term campaign against the religious organization will not cease until the church is "destroyed."

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